08.28.09
ODF Workshop in Brazil Reveals Big New Wins
Summary: Assemblage of microblogs showing considerable ODF progress
As we noted before, this week is the week of the ODF Workshop (not the same as the ODF Plugfest [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9 10, 11]). The FFII writes: “ODF Workshop in Brasilia, today and tomorrow http://www.odfworkshop.org/“
Rob Weir passes on the following message: “Live stream from ODF Workshop: http://bit.ly/HeY8r click on “Salao Nobre Michal Gartenkraut”.”
This links to a page written in Portuguese because the event takes place in Brazil. In addition to seemingly repetitive microblogs, there is Jomar Silva claiming that the “Brazilian Army and Navy just signed the Brasilia Protocol. The Airforce signed last year. Now they’re all using ODF !!! Wow 
”
Brazil has been an ODF supporter for quite some time. The additional good news comes from some Twitter users located in Brazil and passed on by Rob Weir, then Yoon Kit. Silva also writes: “Arno Webb now starting his presentation about Open Standards and ODF in South Africa.”
Later messages from Silva, who takes a key role in this event, say the following:
“Estimative from Fabiano is that they have almost a million ODF users on Paraná state. An impressive work on ODF & free software”
Also:
“South Africa has 11 official languages, and they can’t have problems with interoperability when translating & publishing. The solution: ODF.”
“Brazilian Army and Navy just signed the Brasilia Protocol. The Airforce signed last year. Now they’re all using ODF !!!”
–Jomar SilvaAnd also:
“Paulo Maia told us that the Brasilia Protocol involves almost 600.000 ODF users… We’ll reach a 1M soon ”
About participation he writes:
“40 participants from 13 countries, 1 and a half days of excellent presentations and discussions and the 3rd ODF Workshop is over.”
The following update is wonderful news:
“Just signed the Brasilia protocol, representing ODF Alliance Latin America ”
John Drinkwater concludes with:
“twitter.com/w3cbrasil/status/3578396616 ← that’s impressive, W3C Brazil signing up to support #ODF documents”
South America is apparently more progressive than many other countries. Some Danes, for example, are OK with ignoring Microsoft’s OOXML corruption. One person writes: “The Danish Competition Authority seems to actually LIKE sitting back and watching Microsoft and ODF advocates flame each other. Popcorn?”
Watch how IDG pretends that those OOXML crimes are all behind:
It’s not exactly the thawing of the Cold War, but Microsoft’s inclusion in a new group launched by Oasis is a sign that the bitter war over open document formats has been forgotten.
Says who? OASIS was hardly part of this dispute.
Regarding the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15], here is another Web site (goodbyemicrosoft.net) which uses it to rationalise a move to ODF and ODF-anchored software.
Fast forward to today, and we learn that a company called i4i has won a lawsuit against Microsoft because Microsoft’s use of XML — including OOXML — infringes an i4i patent. Microsoft has to pay i4i $290 million, and stop selling Word 2003 and Word 2007. Presumably, any product supporting OOXML will need to pay royalties to i4i.
Meanwhile, ODF does not violate the i4i patent. (i4i has “looked at OpenOffice and found it doesn’t infringe on its patents.” OpenOffice uses ODF.)
If you want your documents to be widely accessible, and remain accessible, you should use Open Document Format.
At IBM, employees are apparently encouraged to use Lotus Symphony as their ODF-compliant office suite. Good news all around. █
twitter said,
August 28, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Sure, the war is over. Who uses OOXML? I’ve only heard of clueless public school types using them and have never seen one in the wild. M$ has had a very hard time moving it’s new Office programs and an even harder time pushing new formats. No one really wants to buy a new version of Word and they dread what M$ has made.